But both Turkey and other Middle Eastern countries need more than optimism and nostalgia.

Political leaders and Ottoman enthusiasts in Turkey should bear in mind that the Ottoman system had worked well until the moment it didn’t. From the Skull Tower in Serbia to the forced immigrations of Balkan Muslims into Anatolia and the forced deportation of Armenians in 1915, the collapse of Pax Ottomana (Ottoman peace) left many people in the region with tragic memories. Overall, those tragedies came about because the Ottoman Empire had failed to build representative political institutions and a free market economy to counter ethnic separatism.

The Ottoman Empire’s collapse at the end of World War I left a deep political vacuum in the Balkans and the Middle East-North Africa. And neither European colonialism nor the imposition of national boundaries after 1918 managed to create democratic, peaceful, and prosperous countries in those regions. On the contrary, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the wars in former Yugoslavia, and dictatorships in the Middle East and North Africa dominated the scene until now.

Fortunately, the European Union has managed to move the Balkans forward (with the exception of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is another story). So it’s a question of whether Turkey can help to move the Middle East and North Africa forward.

But that’s not to say that Turkey doesn’t have anything to offer. Quite the contrary: Despite its shortcomings, Turkey’s ability to maintain a reasonably democratic and secular system in a Muslim-majority country shows that Islam does not preclude democratic or good governance. In the post-September 11 world, that fact can inspire burgeoning political movements in other Muslim countries and weaken non-Muslims’ prejudices against the Muslim world. Moreover, although reviving the Ottoman Empire is a potentially hurtful idea, Ankara’s grand strategy to create a free trade and cooperation zone covering the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus, and even Central Asia can ease – if not completely end – a lot of tensions in this part of the world.

But if Turkey wants to lead that project, it has to lead by example. On the political front, Turkey has to adopt a new constitution that protects citizens from the state (not vice versa) and establishes a genuinely democratic order. In other words, no more restrictions on free speech so long as it doesn’t advocate violence; no more persecuting those who have their own ideas about the Armenian deportations of 1915; no more denying education to women in headscarves; no more arbitrary arrest of military officers and journalists on flimsy grounds; and no more mayors going to prison for reciting a poem in public.

On the economic front, the Turkish state should lower the exorbitantly high taxes on gasoline, food, and services, which punish the lower and middle classes, and shift the tax burden to the upper class. It should take the necessary legal steps to combat corruption and improve standards for doing business in order to attract potential investors. Most important, the Turkish state should make health services and public education free for the needy – not just in theory but also in practice (as opposed to the current situation where even poor people have to pay for “public” health and “public” education) so as to maintain a well-trained and healthy workforce. In other words, a state overseeing the workings of the free market rather than commanding them; a business environment where success is determined not by access to politicians but by managerial competence; and a much better position on the United Nation’s Human Development Index rankings (Turkey’s current standing is 83rd out of 169 – behind many of the countries it’s trying to serve as a “model”).﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

Turkey can support its activist foreign policy with genuine domestic reform much more successfully. Raising the standards of living for the people of Turkey is even more important than saying nice things to the peoples of the region and their leaders. If the AKP government and the opposition are sincere about Turkey serving as a model for the Middle East and North Africa, they should put their house in order first.

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Barın Kayaoğlu is a Ph.D. candidate in history at The University of Virginia. He welcomes all comments, questions, and exchanges. To contact him, click here.

This week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan travelled to Kuwait and Qatar with an entourage of journalists and businessmen. Mr. Erdoğan’s visit coincided with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s trip to Cyprus, where she blamed Turkey and Turkish Cypriots for not taking additional steps to reunify the Eastern Mediterranean island. In response, the Turkish Prime Minister called on his German counterpart to “study history” and pointed out the European Union’s reneging on its promise to lift the embargo against Turkish Cypriots and its overall failure in getting the Greek Cypriots to do more for reunification.

Mr. Erdoğan’s criticism against Ms. Merkel was interesting not only because of what he said and where he said it but also because of what he said next. In his speech to the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry on January 12, Mr. Erdoğan underscored the historical connections between Turkey, Kuwait, and other Middle Eastern countries and alluded to the Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) initiative as a way to foster economic and even political integration in the region. The high mark of the Prime Minister’s speech was “all we need is each other.”

With one European government after another coming to the brink of bankruptcy, the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Turkish sentiment around Europe, and the Turkish economy having grown at around 6% in 2010 thanks to its solid banking system and non-EU trade, Turkish people no longer see the European Union as a utopian panacea as they once did.

But does that make the Middle East a viable economic and political alternative to the EU?

Several reasons come to mind – some good, some not so good – to argue why Turkey should or shouldn’t join the EU. A typical skeptic of Middle East integration would argue – correctly – that while Turkey, Iran, and the Arab world make up over 7% of the world’s population (500 million out of a global population pushing toward 7 billion), their real GDP barely makes 5% of the global economy ($2.8 trillion out of $60 trillion). With roughly the same population, however, the EU produces 22% of global income.

But upon closer examination, one can see that the “economic insufficiency” argument can be used to justify closer relations between Turkey and the Muslim world. The gap between high population and low GDP is actually an indicator that there is a lot of room for economic growth in the Middle East. With its diverse economy, Turkey can lead the way for a more prosperous Middle East.

But even if the region’s countless conflicts (Israel-Palestine, Israel-Syria, Israel-Iran, Sudan, and Yemen) were absent, Turkey would still have trouble replacing the EU with MEFTA because the different political, legal, and social systems among Middle Eastern countries are jusst too vast. Even if we could overlook the incompatibility between Turkey’s basically democratic regime with the region’s more authoritarian governments (other than Turkey, only Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, and Lebanon are democratic), we would still have to deal with the diversity of opinions among Middle Eastern societies with respect to the role of religion in public life and the free market. At any rate, an integrated Middle East market would need legal systems that are in tandem with each other becayse investors would like to have similar laws in different parts of the region. But that is still far off into the future.

Despite significant technical hurdles, the enthusiasm and welcoming attitude toward Turkey in the Middle East contrasts sharply with the rise of Turkophobia in Europe. Although Prime Minister Erdoğan denies that his Middle East initiative is not an alternative to the EU, the region is becoming increasingly more attractive for Turkish tourists and businessmen. As visa restrictions are becoming a thing of the past, Turks and other Middle Eastern nations are rediscovering their common cultural and historical heritage. And add to that the immense popularity of Turkish TV soap operas and musicians throughout the Arab and Muslim world, one can get a better sense of the rapprochement.

But this rapprochement can turn out to be less than auspicious for global peace. If Turkey does choose Middle Eastern countries over the EU, it would prove Samuel Huntington’s problematic “clash of civilizations” thesis correct and erect political and psychological barriers between Turkey and Europe. Turkey has always prided itself as a “bridge between East and West.” Choosing one over the other may hurt its desire to become a global player in the twenty-first century.

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Barın Kayaoğlu is a Ph.D. candidate in history at The University of Virginia. He welcomes all comments, questions, and exchanges. To contact him, click here.